Analysis On The Conversion Of Connectives And Translation Approaches In English-Chinese Translation Of Historical Texts

With the characterization of unique language style and stylistic features, the historical material requires a faithful and concise translation which may best bring out the implications of the original, ultimately achieving the closest correspondence between the source language and the target language at the semantic and stylistic levels as well. To achieve this purpose, category shifts on the syntactic level needs to be utilized. The present study attempts to focus on the shifts of connectives in the process of English-Chinese translation of the historical material texts and aims to summarize the specific and effective translation strategies with high operability, i.e. the cutting approach in accordance with time sequence, the cutting on the basis of logical relations, and the cutting in the light of separation of setting from event. The previous surveys on translation approaches and strategies are mainly confined to the controversies of literal translation and free translation, foreignization and domestication, and few have carried out the research from the perspective of definite conversions at the morphological, syntactic and semantic levels. The present study is an attempt to go beyond the narrow confinement and devotes itself to the shifts of connectives in the process of English-Chinese translation of historical materials.The thesis takes the sentence as the unit to perform English-Chinese translation and the connectives in the original as the focus of attention to analyze which principles a translator shall follow to cut the sentence for better comprehending the implications of the original. The cutting approaches in E-C translation of historical materials have been illustrated by the examples chosen from the correspondence from1935to1949between Dr. Louis Smythe and Dr. H. H. Love, professors of Cornell University.The study finds out that the cutting approaches in E-C translation of historical texts performed on the basis of connectives may be categorized as follows:if events in a sentence occur successively, the sentence may be rendered into Chinese following the principle of time sequence; if there are some logical relations hidden in a sentence, the implications of the original text should be found out and translated into Chinese according to the logical relations; historical materials tend to recount an event by employing the descriptive words or clauses describing the setting of the event in which case the translator shall abide by the principle of separation of setting from event.